Everything We Don’t Say with Words
by misscam
Summary: Not everything needs words, his mother once told him when he tried to understand living without sound. You can still talk in silence. You can still hear when someone says nothing. You just don’t use your ears. GSR


Everything We Don't Say with Words

by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: CBS's characters. My words.

Author's Note: Spoilers for season seven, vague references to past seasons.

II

The first time she meets him, she doesn't tell him she can already imagine a future with him. A house stacked with books. A dog, or a cat, and a colony of whatever bug he has a love for that year. A lab they both work at. Kids, maybe, if she dares.

He is older, but it's his brain that first makes her fingers feel ticklish. The looks she agrees with too, and it isn't a hard thing to imagine taking off his glasses and jumping him in a car somewhere.

Gil Grissom. She even likes the taste of his name on her tongue. It could go with hers. Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle. It cold work.

She doesn't tell him anything of this, merely listens to him talk about bugs while the San Francisco sun gives the illusion of moving. It's the Earth that moves, she knows, the only thing her father told her that was of any worth. Perception isn't reality.

She can still see it becoming real.

II

The first time he kisses her, he doesn't say a word. She can hear him breathe – inhale, exhale, catch – but he says nothing, doesn't even mutter her name. He doesn't need to, she supposes. He keeps his eyes open all along, from the moment he looks at her lips and leans forward until she takes a step back, his hand still entangled in her hair. He knows it's her.

Why, she doesn't ask. She knows why. She's known why since the first time he looked at her in That Way, eyes dark even in rooms filled with light. Why, she knows. Why now, she wants to ask. After all the hurt and waiting and silence and careful friendship, why now?

She says nothing. He says nothing. In the distance, cars roar, Vegas sparks and crickets hiss, but it's all background noise she can tune out.

"Sara," he finally says. Just that, before kissing her again.

It's a careful kiss, brushing more than exploring, touching more than feeling. He smells faintly of sweat, and she knows that if she licks his skin just briefly, she will taste the salt of it.

Long day's journey into salt, she thinks briefly, and feels his fingers brush her ears in something between a trace and a caress.

He never does answer what she doesn't ask.

II

The first time he sleeps with her, he never asks. He doesn't need to; not with her tongue in his mouth, his hands on her breasts, her nails burrowing into his sheets, her skin rubbing against his and leaving heat in both. Somewhere in the dark is her shirt on his shirt, entangled in something like an embrace.

Something like a relationship.

"Gilbert," she said when he brought her to his house, mischief in her voice. Since then she's said nothing, though she hasn't been silent. He kisses; she sighs. He touches; she moans. He thrusts; she pants. Variations in Sara-noise, he thinks, and muffles his own against her shoulder.

There are a million words on the tip of his tongue, but he can't quite rearrange them into something resembling a coherent sentence. He isn't sure what is norm these days either – 'thank you for letting me have use of your vagina'?

He tries it out-loud and she just laughs – delight, not mocking, and he can feel the sound reverberate with her heartbeats against his palm.

Would Sara Sidle like to sleep with Gil Grissom?

He never does ask what's been answered by default.

II

The first time she knows she loves him, she doesn't tell him. It's a Thursday evening just before work; he is showering, she is eating. She can faintly hear the sound of running water, coupled with the hissing cool of the fridge it feels almost lulling.

Peace, she thinks, and feels it. Her hair is still drying from her shower, and if she closes her eyes she can still smell the soap on his hands, joining her under the spray of water.

It isn't so much the sex (though she is not complaining!), but the familiarity of it. The sharing out of habit, as if it's something they've done for ages and will keep doing for another. It's a relationship and future and potential and love, and of course she loves him. She has for a long time, but now she knows.

She doesn't tell him. He comes out of the shower, they eat breakfast, he drives her to her place so she can drive to work on her own. They've done it before. They'll do it again.

She doesn't have to tell him. They're already building a future on it.

II

The first time he sees her watching a program about sign language, he leaves her to watch it in silence. He's never told her he almost went deaf, and it feels a hard habit to break now. There doesn't seem a good time, or perhaps he just never makes a time for it and all the things he'll have to say with it.

Instead, he leaves a book open on otosclerosis one day, mentions his mother had it another, lets a form be visible on his desk that reveals he's had surgery, leave Catherine and Sara alone to talk every chance he gets.

Sara is smart. He knows she pieces the bits together. He knows she knows.

He doesn't need to tell her then, he figures, and never does.

II

The first time she wakes from a nightmare, she doesn't wake him to talk. He's had a long shift at work, and she knew from the first glance at him that it was a case that haunts. He doesn't need her ghosts too.

Natalie. A car. Water. The taste of blood. Desperation for life. And the split, split ever-lasting second where she wanted to die.

She can still taste the shame of that. The rest she knows is normal for trauma, but the weakness feels like a splinter in her mind. She could have given up. She could have died. She could have…

Grissom rolls over, and she feels his hand against the small of her back. He says nothing, not even when she presses her head against his chest and feels his heartbeats against her scalp.

She doesn't wake him the next time either, but he's already awake, offering silence without solitude.

II

The first time he knows the job is getting too much for her, he doesn't warn her. He has in the past, but then he was boss and now he is boyfriend, and it's the boyfriend that sees.

When she kisses him, he can see the dark in her eyes. When he sleeps, he can see echoes of the nightmares on her face. When she calls him from work, he can hear the fatigue in her voice. When she sits by him on the cough, he can see the tension stay in her bones and skin.

He knows the signs; he's been the signs.

He says nothing. Just kisses her back, sleeps with her, listens to her calls and touches her skin where her mind is out of reach.

He never warns her, but she's already crashing and he can just watch the debris.

II

The first time she calls him from San Francisco, she doesn't tell him she loves him. He mentions the letter, and she knows he read it there, but it still feels too much like insult to tell him.

She's run away. She's been a coward. She's hurt his feelings. She's left and all she can manage to say are a few assurances and the weather report.

"I miss you," he says, and gives her the Las Vegas weather report too.

She doesn't tell him, but she does write it on the card she sends.

II

The first time he sees her again in San Francisco, he doesn't say call out, just stands still and watches her look for him.

Her hair is lighter, her eyes are brighter and she looks almost rejuvenated. It's been for the good then, and still he feels angry that she left. But then, so did he for a while, and left a letter too.

She turns around and sees him, and for at least then seconds she says nothing, just walks towards him a little hesitantly.

None of them too good with words spoken, he thinks. Maybe they'll get better. Maybe they won't.

Maybe it doesn't matter.

"Hello Gil," she finally says, and he takes the last step to close the distance between them. She exhales once, as if holding her breath, and doesn't sigh when he kisses her a little angrily. She knows, he imagines, just like he knew when he came home and she tied him to a bedpost a whole night. There are other ways to communicate anger than by words.

Not everything needs words, his mother once told him when he tried to understand living without sound. You can still talk in silence. You can still hear when someone says nothing. You just don't use your ears.

She curves a little to lean her head against his jacket, and he wonders if she can really hear his heart through all the layers of cloth.

Yeah.

"Hello Sara," he says, and lets everything else be silence.

II

FIN


End file.
